Oak Trees and Grapevines
by Emma Fallowthorn
Summary: They all had their vices. Hers was red wine.


Oak Trees and Grapevines

She didn't know when it was that she had begun to identify people by their alcohol. It had been a game—see how long of a conversation it would take before she figured it out. Then at some point it had become instinctive, the way a smell summons up a flash of memory.

_They all had their vices. Hers, like so many others', was alcohol, in the form not of beer or whiskey, but of red wine._

She should have known she'd come back to it eventually. Her favorite childhood memory (_before_) was her father letting her have tiny sips from his glass, laughing as she grimaced at the taste but carried gamely on trying. She'd always had that problem, growing up too fast, running before she could walk, singing before she could talk.

_Foreman (already had one didn't need another) was Madeira, smooth and dark and sweet. The 18__th__ century drink of choice. Madeira was pirates and smuggling. Madeira had a sense of old-world adventure blanketed in a mask of warmth. She didn't drink Madeira much; in a way it frightened her._

She'd sworn off alcohol (_after_), become the good girl, terrified of doing wrong, screwing up, getting in trouble. Panic attacks when she got in any situation that even hinted at walking on the west side of what her mother thought was okay. Played the violin and sang in choir. Only cheerleader in high school to spend prom night in a Mormon family's basement, drinking soda and eating Pringles, talking to friends, watching the boys play ping-pong and falling asleep on the couch during _Sixteen Candles._ Single experience with drugs completely accidental, some idiot gave her an innocent-looking brownie and, like an idiot, she ate it. Hallucinated (briefly), vomited (violently), burned out (quickly). She'd always been mature (_naïve)_. Didn't really have an adolescent stage. No Odyssey. Thirteen going on thirty.

_Her grandma had had an arbor in the backyard—sweet grapes, Concord grapes, for jam. She had lain beneath it on autumn days, cool sunlight dappling her face, pretending it was Tuscany or Burgundy or one of those other wonderful names that sang mysteries and breathed woodsy, mellow bouquets in her mind. Her grandpa had built the arbor himself, strong arms of oak crisscrossing to form a safe home for the fruit, high above the reach of the thirsty fox._

It wasn't that surprising that she came back to alcohol late—freshman year of college, January 13, a Saturday evening. And it wasn't that surprising that it wasn't at a keg party or even a club, but in a friend's attic, watching _Casablanca_ and eating cheese and crackers. And it was almost like fate, that it wasn't beer, vodka, Schnapps or Kahlua, but Cabernet Sauvignon. 1978. Good year, for wine at least.

_Wilson was brandy. The rescue dog's drink. The encouragement. She didn't drink brandy that often; it was strong and warm, but a little too unstable for her tastes._

She had met him because of wine. She'd gotten the call that day, her birthday. Suddenly it had become another (_after)_, another of those cold milestones that looked nothing so much as tombstones in her mind. She'd taken her brand-new ID and gone to a bar alone, a grown-up now. And like a responsible grown-up she would drown not in _hard liquor_, but soft velvet (was there steel beneath? She thought there might be).

The door had banged open, letting a rush of chill wind and rain into the warmth and hubbub of the bar. She hadn't bothered to turn around, too busy contemplating the color of her downfall, but she looked up when he took the only available seat at the bar, beside her. His eyes were just a little puffy, she noticed. She supposed hers might be as well. She returned to her ruminations, vaguely hearing him rap on the bar and request Bushmills, straight up. His voice was hoarse and just a little on the desperate side; he sounded a bit like she felt.

She cast him a sideways glance and he met her eyes, and just like that, she knew—somehow, he was her. She was him. He turned back to the barkeep and changed his order.

"I'm Alison," she offered quietly, eyes on her wine, wondering when she would actually drink any. It wasn't ready yet—you were supposed to warm it with your body heat but she was cold, cold all over.

"I'm Dean…" his voice choked briefly as though he was trying to say more but couldn't get the words out. He grabbed his glass and took a swig: an amateur. He was used to Guiness, she thought, or Bushmills like he'd ordered before.

"You at the university?" Something to say, something to do.

"No—" he stuttered again. "I…" Something broke—"I have cancer and I'm going to die and I don't want to tell anyone in my family but I need someone to know and—''

He stopped again, buried his nose in his glass (_ashamed?_).

"Oh." It wasn't warm enough yet, but she took a sip anyway. "It's my birthday."

A flash of irony lit his face, although he did not smile. "Oh, I'm—so sorry."

Somehow the bar became his apartment somehow they fell together and he was the arbor and she was the vine, twining herself around him becoming one, oak beams pointless without vine, vine unable to live without the beams, becoming wine, grapes plus wood equals wine. Red wine, always; red wine for autumn and winter, warming from the inside. Summers were white wine.

_The lover whom she would never love was white wine. White wine is drunk cold, right out of the icebox. The drink of summer. The drink that left her with a crashing headache and a "never-again" feeling in the morning. And yet sometimes—with spaghetti alfredo—she couldn't help herself._

It was white wine she drank when she went to dinner with his friend the night he died. White wine, for something she was not, something intrinsically against her nature. White wine for hatred and despair and headaches and heartaches. She didn't drink red wine for a long time after that.

_Cuddy was a dry martini, vivid and outgoing, capable of causing a great deal of trouble. She hated martinis. She'd tried one once, at a party, and she knew she'd never drink it again. It tasted like her mother's perfume—harsh then sweet then harsh again. Changeable as the sea._

She'd come back to red wine the day she'd completed her internship at Mayo. She was leaving in a week and she'd just turned down a double offer: a job and a new husband. She'd told herself it was because she was sick of Minnesota, sick of winter, wanted a job someplace warm and he'd never leave the clinic for her—but she knew the truth. She wasn't going to marry again, not for a long damn time. She wasn't looking for a husband. She sat in her living room, finished her celebratory glass, pretended she wasn't crying. Took out her violin (_long time_) and played a Wieniawski romance.

_The love she could never have was Scotch on the rocks, the gentleman's drink, the if-I-weren't-better-than-you-this-would-be-called-swilling drink. Scotch on the rocks did not mix with red wine, but in her humble opinion they were complementary in a way nothing else could be. In a bizarre way they were similar: drunk with a profound desire to forget, and a need to remember that ran so deep even the strongest alcohol could not blur it._

She didn't know when it was that red wine was no longer her friend but her vice, her crutch. When it was that once a month became once a week and then once a day, and then a bottle a night. When she began to drink alone. She knew it was sometime (_after_), but she had lost count of which (_after_) she had reached now. Only one (_before_), when wine was her father. Too many (_after)_s.


End file.
